Most of their latest devices can survive a dip in the drink, but can they cope with something a little more extreme?

With the Japanese firm’s latest Xperia Z3+ arriving at Daily Star HQ, we decided it was time to put this new flagship phone to the ultimate test – a white water rafting adventure in the freezing rivers of Austria.

Sony doesn’t recommend this level of abuse, but is confident it can survive 30 minutes submerged to a depth of around 10m.

So, with the device squeezed inside our wetsuit, we hit the water and put it through a punishing hour of extreme sports – and, boy, were we impressed.

DAVE SNELLING

IMPRESSIVE: The Z3+ survived over an hour in the freezing waters of Austria

The Z3+ made it through with flying colours, suffering no ill-effects from being submerged in ice-cold water for over an hour.

It’s phenomenal stuff, especially as Sony has achieved this without the need for annoying covers over the charging and headphone ports.

Few phones can cope with water and it certainly gives the Z3+ a very unique selling point.

Being waterproof isn't the only thing to get you excited about this phone as the Xperia Z3+ also includes a dazzling 5.2-inch HD display, super-fast Snapdragon 810 Octa Core processor and, with Sony’s classic metal and glass styling, the Z3+ wouldn’t look out of place on a Paris catwalk.

The design also includes tiny shock absorbers on each corner, which should help avoid a smashed screen if it happens to slip through your fingers.

And you get a decent 32GB of expandable storage and some very classy colours to choose from.

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SMASHING: The Xperia Z3+ has shock shock absorbers on each corner

For your extreme photos there’s a tasty 20.7-megapixel rear camera with selfies being snapped on the phone's 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

And you can listen to top quality tunes via the phone’s High Res Audio player.

So, with all these features, it looks good for the Xperia Z3+ – but sadly there’s a major issue that simply can’t be ignored.

This phone is hot...and not in a good way.

Using some of the Z3’s clever camera features makes it overheat to the point where it turns itself off.

And filming in ultra 4K quality for any more than two minutes brings up an alert warning of the heat danger.

Sony has had this problem before and it’s not good enough that the techies haven’t found a way to halt the heat.

DAVE SNELLING

CAMERA: Sony's 20.7-megapixel camera takes very tasty snaps

Battery life won’t have you leaping with joy either with phones from Samsung and Apple easily beating it in our famous Star Wars juice test.

Most phones make it through the original space trilogy without any issues, but the Z3+ ran out of puff before we'd finished watching the final movie.

It’s such a shame this device has been let down by these issues as it should easily be a 5 Star phone.

VERDICT:

Sony has produced another stunner with the Z3+ and surviving our underwater adventure was mighty impressive.

The device has plenty of nice features, is fast and its classic styling makes this one of the best looking phones you can buy.

If you do splash your cash on one, we guarantee you’ll like it – just be ready to feel the heat when you use it.